When Mother Teresa passed from this earth to Heaven, on September 5th 1997, for some long minutes Calcutta was completely in the dark. A new light had gone up above us. “Now, after the ‘official’ recognition of her holiness, it shines even brighter. May this light, which is the undying light of the Gospel, keep shining on our worldly pilgrimage and on the paths of this difficult world!”. This was said this morning by the secretary of State, cardinal Pietro Parolin, at the Mass of Thanksgiving for the canonisation of Mother Teresa officiated in St Peter’s Square. “Mother Teresa – Parolin said – liked to call herself ‘a pencil in Our Lord’s hands’. But, what poems of charity, compassion, comfort and joy did that little pencil write! Poems of love and tenderness for the poorest of the poor, to whom she consecrated her life!”. Mother Teresa – Parolin then went on – “opened her eyes on suffering”, “embraced it with a look of compassion, all her being was moved and upset by this encounter, which – somewhat – pierced her heart, in the wake of Jesus, who was moved by the suffering of the human being unable to stand up again alone”.
In his sermon, the cardinal mentioned the famous speech given by Mother Teresa when she received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on September 11th 1979. “It is very important for us to understand that love must hurt, if it is real. Loving us hurt Jesus, it hurt Him”. And, thanking the current and future benefactors, she said: “I do not want you to give me the surplus you have, I want you to give me until it hurts”. “In my opinion – Parolin said – these words are like a threshold, past which we get into the abyss that wrapped up the Saint’s life, at those heights and in those depths that are difficult to explore because they closely resemble Christ’s suffering, His unconditional gift of love and the extremely deep wounds that He had to suffer. It is the unfathomable density of the Cross, of this ‘hurting’ of the good done for the love of God”.